A Day in Monument Park

Thursday

Dec 13, 2012 at 8:49 PM

The Seminole War is not forgotten in Fort Meade. A stone monument with the names of five soldiers killed in a battle near there, on June 14-16, 1856, rises from a large grassy field surrounded by homes in the southeast section of this city in south Polk.

By ROBIN WILLIAMS ADAMSTHE LEDGER

FORT MEADE | The Seminole War is not forgotten in Fort Meade.

A stone monument with the names of five soldiers killed in a battle near there, on June 14-16, 1856, rises from a large grassy field surrounded by homes in the southeast section of this city in south Polk.

These U.S. Army soldiers, led by Lt. Alderman Carlton, died in an engagement called the Willoughby Tillis Battle.

Carlton's remains are buried there, the monument says, as are those of Lott Widden, William Parker, Robert F. Prine and George Howell.

At that time, the Willoughby Tills homestead was slightly more than a mile south of Fort Meade, according to a blog post on Historic Peace River Valley Florida.

Some of Carlton's descendants erected the monument, the central point of Monument Park. Inclusively, the monument also pays tribute to unnamed others who were wounded.

To the side, a ground-level plaque beside a small tree is dedicated to "all veterans and civilians who served their country during World War II." The Fort Meade Veterans of Foreign Wars placed that memorial in 2001, it says.

Another tree remembers two members of the Fort Meade Garden Club. A couple of letters of the names are hard to read or missing.

A small clump of palmetto and other trees is at north end of the park. There are other scattered trees, a pecan tree, an orange tree, a Japanese plum; but mostly the park is an open field on which children could run and play.

The park on Southeast Second Street isn't fenced in.

A sign on the grass on one side says "no parking" but other sides don't have that restriction.

And it is beside a residential road, which could allow people to park and spend a pensive moment remembering the days when Florida's Seminoles fought for something other than a football title.

[ Robin Williams Adams can be reached at robin.adams@theledger.com or 863-802-7558. Read her blog at robinsrx.blogs.theledger.com. Follow on Twitter at @ledgerROBIN. ]